~ MACEL ~

Morning came to Macel in the form of a gentle breeze and the song of strange birds. He lay still a while, keeping his eyes shut fast against the sun’s light. Why hurry to wake? The day was still young. He could afford to dream a while.

It had been far too long since he’d slept in the open—since that week with Flossie. He’d been seventeen, fresh-faced and unsure of his future. Some old corners of the world held on to traditions long after their need was lost, and tiny little Cadéist had been one of the very oldest corners. One day he’d returned home from school to find pretty little Flossie Mayborn waiting for him, dressed in her finest and quaking like a scared lamb.

They were to spend a week together in the glades overlooking the village, to fend for themselves. It was an old courtship ritual. Macel had to prove himself. If he could support Flossie for a week up on the hills, out in the wilderness, the two would be formally betrothed. Macel had had his eye on Flossie since the first gasp of puberty. More than once he’d asked his father to arrange a courtship for him. To spend a week alone with her was the dream of his formative years. As he’d left with the girl wrapped around his arms, his father had reminded him of what he needed to do. He was to impress her, make her fall in love with him, but all that was secondary. It didn’t really matter how she felt about him, so long as she came back from the glades carrying his baby. Shame, if nothing else, would force her into the marriage.

Macel didn’t remember much about Flossie—the real Flossie, the woman he’d come to know on their week in the glades. He remembered how she looked, and how she squealed at every slight rustle of leaves. He remembered how disappointed he was to learn that the girl he had his heart set on was such a... well, such a girl. And he remembered the mornings he’d spent on the glades—the gurgling of the little brook, the whistling of the birds, watching stalks of celandine flutter in the breeze. He’d always awoken before Flossie, and lay there to watch her wake. She was so peaceful while she slept, a gift from the Gods. There was no way to get closer to heaven.

It was a different story when she woke. At the end of the week, they’d returned to the village, and he’d never looked fondly on her again.

Still in his drowse, he stretched out his arms, enjoying the rub of the grass on his skin. Just like the glades. It tickled satisfyingly as he moved. And as he stretched, his hand touched something soft and warm, something that grumbled as he pushed at it. He opened his eyes and there she was. Bessily. She slept soundly in the kiss of the sun. Her hair had fallen in a cushion around her head, the way Flossie Mayborn’s did. Her chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm with every breath. He could stay here forever.

She murmured something in a low voice. It might have been his name—he couldn’t tell. Still, he felt compelled to respond in kind: “Good morning, Bess.”

His voice had the effect of an alarm. She jolted upright, suddenly awake. “Who said that? Who are you?”

“It’s Macel,” he said. “I’m Delie’s friend.”

She looked at him with wild eyes. “Macel? We didn’t...”

“No.” He shook his head. “We only talked.”

Bess smoothed her dress as she stood, and set about picking little bits of leaf and twig from her hair. There was a swagger in the way she moved, a confident grace. Flossie Mayborn hadn’t had such grace. She’d been timid and meek and afraid of everything that dared move, and her step had been slow and heavy. Bess walked lighter than the air.

“I used to think about the future a lot.” He blurted the thought out loud, to make conversation and to keep Bess around a little longer. “I always tried to picture how my life would turn out. You know, what home would be like, who I’d marry. There was this vision in my mind’s eye—this beautiful girl, her face filled with love.” He laughed at the memory. “It was all just a dream, but sometimes I convinced myself that I could actually see the future. Whenever I felt lonely, I’d tell myself that the perfect woman was out there somewhere, living her life—that one day our paths would cross and we’d just fall in love.”

“That’s a nice thought,” said Bess, trying to smooth her messy hair with only her hands.

“It was a naïve thought. Never trust in destiny, it’s the death of motivation. I was convinced that everything I could ever want was just going to present itself to me—so why should I try and better myself? The best thing I ever did was realise that life isn’t perfect. It won’t come wrapped up with a bow. It’s untidy, it’s messy, and most of the time it’s shit.”

Bess had turned to gaze out at the village in the valley. “Life knows how to stab you in the gut, yeah.” The hollow resignation was palpable in each heavy word she said. She was speaking from experience.

He regarded her closely. She was like a character in a painting, soft of face and kind of heart. The shadow of a nearby tree cast her eyes in pools of sorrow. Who hurt you? he wanted to ask. Why are you so afraid to let your sadness show? Better to let it all out, all the tears, and then start to heal. But she hid behind laughter and an ever-smiling face. She hid it so well he almost couldn’t see it.

On the width of a copperhead she turned. Impenetrable bulkhead doors behind her eyes slid down, and that melancholy was driven away. “It’s a lovely day today,” she said, beaming, a woman struck by a sudden spurt of happiness. “Why waste time on the past?”

It was late in the afternoon when Macel left her, exhausted from a day of nothing. They talked of their future hopes, their favourite books, the songs their mothers used to sing in the crib. They talked about everything that didn’t really matter. And it was only when she’d gone that he realised his heart had been racing all day long.

Sam Preston greeted him as he returned to the bunks, on their grotty corner of the Eia. “There you are, loverbird. Grogan’s gonna be pissed to see you—he had five bushels on that bird last night stabbing you and leaving you for dead somewhere.”

“Not gonna happen,” Macel laughed. “I can handle myself.”

“Yeah? Just as long as there’s no falling in love. We’ve got to make the set first, that was the arrangement.” It wasn’t really an arrangement in the traditional sense. Sam had suggested, over a bottle of some off-white spirit, that they try and get with every girl in Captain Clifford’s section between them. Macel had stayed silent, not sure what to say in response, and apparently that had been taken as his assent.

He wondered if Bessily would count, if she wore a soldier’s uniform. Delie could probably be persuaded to part with one of her spares for a day, for a noble cause.

Sam spotted something amiss. “It’s too late, isn’t it? You’ve already fallen for her.”

Macel shook his head. He hadn’t fallen for her—that was an extreme way of putting things. He’d just spent the whole day by her side, and now he couldn’t get her out of his head. It wasn’t falling for her. It was merely wanting to spend time with her.

And so began the daily game. At the end of every day’s work—work being a generous word for it—he found himself wandering back with Delie. He’d follow Delie as far as her tenement, where Bessily could reliably be found outside. The first time he’d found her there had been a coincidence; he’d gone to ask Delie where he might find Bess, and there saw her lying on the grass, smiling at him.

That was where she’d been every day since. Even when it had rained, and the ground was soaked through, she only went as far as to stand beneath the tenement’s overhanging thatching, and she ran to Macel as soon as she saw him. “I don’t like being indoors,” she explained one time, when he asked her why she was always out on the grass. “Being all cooped up... it’s like waiting to die. The fresh air, it’s freedom.”

Occasionally, her work at the stables kept her busy until long after dark. It wasn’t an arrangement that impressed her. “People are always hiring the draft horses, and they’re bringing them back late,” she moaned. “Speke reckons they’re building something they don’t want us to know about. He says they’re having the horses take stuff up onto the hills under cover of darkness so we can’t see what they’re taking.”

“What’s the point of that?” Macel laughed. “You can’t exactly hide a building.”

“That’s what I said,” Bess said. “But there’s no convincing him. Have you met Speke? Man’s a nut. I love him, of course, he’s like a father to me. But he’s insane.”

Macel had waited for her for three hours, this evening, burning his back in the heat of the sun. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Tomorrow, he’d be off to Plateau Watch, far from the valley, quite possibly never to return. How could he go without seeing Bess one last time? And so he’d stayed there until she arrived, no matter how long that took.

Delie joined him for a time. She and her housemate Inge had helped Macel to the bottom of a half-dozen bottles of amber cider that he’d brought along before they retired for the night. Since then, he’d supped on the dregs of his last bottle—which was also his first, the girls having drunk most of it between them—and gazed up at the stars.

“These aren’t the constellations we know,” he said, as Bess nestled beside him. “The stars are the same, but the shapes are different. I think we should change that. What do you see?”

“I never learned the constellations,” said Bess. “Looking at the stars always made me feel sad.”

“Are you telling me you never looked up at the stars? Not even once?” It had been a rite of passage for the kids of Macel’s village. Up on the glades, or even in the belt of green that ran between the two pine groves, they shone so brightly. Some nights you could even read a book by their light, if the gossiping old ladies were to be believed. Uncle Lynal used to take him to the Merrowain Heights on clear summer evenings and show him all the pictures that the stars made. He had boxes full of scribbles at home, on tiny scraps of paper—his attempts to retrace his memory with pencil and crayon. Every constellation was there. He’d learnt them by the time he was six.

In the big cities the stars were invisible. That had been the thing that upset him the most about Pattinsdale. It made him pine for home, sometimes desperately so. But he’d not return. Not ever. In Cadéist he bore the stain of weakness. Society had no place for a scared little boy. He hadn’t even been able to face Flossie before he left; she’d see his shame, and know he was just as coward as she was.

Stars or no stars, he wasn’t about to give up and go back. So if he couldn’t see the stars from where he was, that meant he had to take himself to where the stars were. The Unity was his ticket. Even the lowest grunts got to go into space.

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Bess blinked slowly. “I looked at the stars sometimes. When I was a little girl I used to feel sorry for them, up in the sky all alone, so many millions of miles away from any company. Nobody to talk to. Like me, I guess. In a way, I suppose the stars were the only friends I ever had.”

“And here you are among them. Among friends.”

She smiled. “It’s poetry. There must be a song for it.”

“If there isn’t, you should write it.”

Bess shook her head. “I’m terrible with words. It wouldn’t be any good.”

“Of course it would be,” said Macel. “You’d be writing it.”

He was overcome by a sudden urge to stroke her hair. It looked so soft, the way it almost shimmered in the crackling light of a distant fire. She arched her head back when he touched it, and smiled her assent.

“What brought you here? Don’t you miss what you left behind?” Macel had to ask the question. He’d never wanted to go back home, never wanted anything other than to start afresh, but still his mind often wandered to the old days. Was that normal?

Bess spoke with her eyes closed, and his fingers in her hair. “I miss what might have been, in the life that should have been mine. I haven’t been home for years, and I can’t imagine I’d have been welcomed. I’ve been working for Speke since I was thirteen, prenticing and board. Where he goes, I follow—and he’s come here, so here I am.”

And a good thing too, thought Macel. Else I’d not have met you.

At the crack of dawn, Lieutenant Bennett’s chosen garrison set off for the fortress on the plateau. There was no need for them to go so early in the day, the hike took only a few hours, but Bennett had made it an order, and nobody felt like pissing her off to refuse a direct order. Macel was already sleepy and tired as they assembled in the plaza; by the time they’d left the town behind and started to climb the hills around the valley, all he wanted to do was drop to the ground and sleep. He’d been up most of the night again. Whatever birds lived in the trees outside Bessily’s tenement, they were noisier than any others he’d ever heard, and their preference was apparently for night-time singing. He’d given up in the early hours and returned to his bunk on the Eia. At least there the only sound was Craig Armitage’s snoring.

The procession moved slowly up the hill. The terrain was uneven, the weather overcast, and nobody really knew the way. Most of the Advanced Party were returning to the scene of their first night. Sergeant Malleston alone had stayed at the fort, keeping it running while the others rested.

Macel liked Sergeant Malleston, but word was that he was a bit of a wet weekend. Matt Grogan reckoned that on at least one occasion Malleston had been so reluctant to punish a guilty subordinate, when demotion was the proscribed sentence, that the guilty man had ended up being promoted instead. Mind you, Matt Grogan also reckoned that the man in question was Captain Clifford, and Macel knew well that Captain Clifford had been an officer for longer than Sergeant Malleston had been enlisted, so he found that particular story a touch dubious.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Sergeant Malleston no longer had command. He was outranked by Lieutenant Bennett, something the Witch would no doubt flaunt every day she was in charge. Lieutenant Bennett was anything but a wet weekend. The Advanced Party had learned the hard way that she demanded absolute obeisance. Two days after the discovery of the bleeding man, Delie had returned late from a search. Lieutenant Bennett had made the rest of them stand outside the camp while she screamed at her, and Delie had spent the rest of the night stood on one leg beside the fire.

“She can’t be that bad,” the grey-faced Colne had scoffed, two nights ago at the Tavern. “Give me a night with her. Maybe I can fuck the bitchiness right out of her.” He’d been slapped so hard across the cheek by Delie for that that his face had been glowing for the rest of the night. If Colne was part of Lieutenant Bennett’s garrison, he was keeping a low profile. Macel hadn’t seen him since.

They ascended the valley’s slopes three abreast, trudging in formation as broiling grey clouds swirled overhead. Macel tugged on his jacket, clasping the buttons together. The chill today was an insidious one. He’d barely notice the cold at all until every limb was frigid. The uniform regulations made an allowance for gloves, but his were packed at the very bottom of his pack, and he’d have to empty it all out to get to them. Instead, he walked briskly, and pulled the serge jacket tight around him. His hands couldn’t get frostbitten if he got indoors quick enough.

“That’s one hell of a view,” said Delie, catching up to Macel at the crest of a high hill. His pacing had been all off, and he’d found himself completely out of breath already. He’d paused long enough for Delie to reach him. She was accompanied by Liz Hamish, who’d tried to dye the fringe of her hair green but ended up inventing a new shade of greyish brown. Macel looked their way, shattered, and yawned. Delie laughed. “It’s a pity you were up all night. You might enjoy the view more if you weren’t so tired.”

“You knew?”

“You aren’t as subtle as you think,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And don’t forget, I’ve been rooming with Bess. Every morning she tells us all about your late night meetings. She likes you, Macel, even if she won’t say so herself. It’s like a little girl’s first crush; all she does is talk about you, but if anyone else so much as mentions your name in front of her she turns bright red. Don’t you let her down.”

He grimaced. “It’s gonna be a bit hard for me to have any interaction with her for the time being. There’s no way I’m doing this walk back and forth every night.”

“You don’t need to,” said Delie. “You do know she’ll be up at Plateau Watch with us, right?”

“Are you sure?” He worried he sounded a bit too excited.

“Of course I am,” said Delie. “She works with horses. All of Speke’s drays are coming with us, do you think she’s gonna be left behind?”

Sam Preston was bantering with a couple of likely lads when he caught up with them. He split off to interject. “Does it not bother you? Just leaving your housemates behind? By my count, you’re only leaving two behind.”

Delie shrugged. “They’ll manage. None of us ever see Ella anyway, she’s always locked away reading, and Inge’s got herself engaged to a soldier already.”

“I didn’t think she knew any soldiers,” said Sam. “Ourselves excepted, of course.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know him. She’s only met the guy once. They just married for the benefits—he’s Constabulary, and it turns out they give you a lot more freedom and a lot more money when you’re married.” Delie smirked. “Inge’s in it for profit, not love.”

Macel rolled his eyes. “The death of romance.”

“Who’s the guy?” asked Liz Hamish. “Someone we know?”

“She wouldn’t tell me his name. Might not even know it herself.”

“Famously a good basis for a healthy marriage,” Macel muttered.

Delie continued unfazed. “Apparently old Captain Mannam’s got his secrets. Likes to have a go with the Constabulary wives, and pays them well for their time. Now, I’m not just talking money. I’m talking land, reevedoms, honours. You know what Inge’s like, she wants a chunk of that.”

The Sergeant came by just then. Four days of unmanaged stubble framed his round face, and his mouth was home to several yellowed teeth. His name was Donnelly, but he insisted that people call him “the Sergeant”. He seldom spoke. Most of those he’d served alongside despised him, usually for good reasons. Instead he would watch their conversations with narrowed eyes, and sniff loudly when he heard something he didn’t like.

“I hope you aren’t chit-chatting,” he sneered. “Or I’d have to tell Lieutenant Bennett.” He was fiercely loyal to Bennett, a real lapdog. He seemed to get a kick out of informing on even petty misdeeds to score brownie points. Unlike most women, Bennett hadn’t explicitly turned down sex with him, which probably went some way towards explaining his devotion.

Delie had previous with the Sergeant, an incident where he felt he was owed sex for doing her a favour, and instead got a broken nose. Since then she hadn’t spurned a single opportunity to talk him down. “We’re walking in a column, Sergeant. Do you want me to walk in silence?”

“You know what I want from you,” he drooled. Delie leaned away, her face a picture of revulsion.

“Piss off, mate,” said Sam. “That’s out of order.”

“Act like a sergeant, if you want to call yourself one,” Macel added.

The Sergeant bristled. “Lieutenant Bennett won’t be pleased to learn that her soldiers have been disrespecting an officer.”

“And Captain Clifford won’t be pleased to learn that you’ve been harassing people,” said Macel. “So don’t you try threatening us like that—it’s you who’ll come off worse.”

The Sergeant sloped off, lips pursed, to bother somebody else.

“Are you okay?” Macel asked. Delie nodded.

“I’ll get over it. It was worse the last time.”

“Is there nothing you can do about it?”

She shook her head. “I wish. Bennett thinks the sun shines out of his arse for some reason, and above her they’re all too far removed to see what he’s really like. He gets really by-the-book if there’s so much as a sniff of a captain about.”

Macel knew the type. There always seemed to be one, everywhere that there were soldiers. “What if we all spoke to Captain Clifford? He’d believe us all then, surely.”

“Not without proof,” said Delie. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

“Come on,” Sam said, suddenly chipper. “We’d best get moving before the Sergeant comes back for more.”

“You’re not afraid of him, surely.”

“No. Afraid of what I might do to him.” His eyes flashed. “I’ll probably end up clocking him one.”

“That would be a sight to see,” said Liz. “And I’d like to see them pin it on you. ‘No, Captain, I swear I never saw Sam’s fist flying. Why, the Sergeant must just have fallen right on that ugly face of his’. I should enjoy that very much.”

“So would I, as a matter of fact,” said Sam. “You know, sometimes I feel like I don’t get the respect I deserve.” As he spoke, he rolled his ankle on a knot in the ground. His leg buckled beneath him, and before anyone could move to stop him he was tumbling down the hill. Not far from where they were stood, the gentle slope became almost a sheer drop, three metres down to a cleft in the ground. That was where Sam finished up. He tumbled arse over tit, and landed in a bed of wild heather.

Macel glanced at Delie, who started to laugh. “You get exactly the respect you deserve, Sam,” she said.

Sam groaned.

“I think he’s hurt,” said Macel.

They found Sam lying prone on the ground, clutching his left ankle and screaming something awful.

“Get a medic or something,” he said, spotting them. “Or do you want me to lie here all day?”

“Is it broken?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a break. Hurts like buggery though. I don’t reckon I can stand on it.” To prove his point, he managed to leverage himself upright using the rock beside him, but crumpled again the instant he put weight on his foot. He gritted his teeth. “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.”

“We can’t all stay with you,” said Delie. “Bennett will explode.”

“That might cheer me up,” Sam laughed.

In the end, Liz went on ahead, so that at least there would be somebody able to explain to Lieutenant Bennett why some of her garrison had gone missing en route. Delie liberated a flask of water from her pack, and sat next to Sam while he drank from it. Macel left them to their refreshment and went in search of aid.

He didn’t have to go far. Just a dozen yards or so down the hill, he found Bess, leading by the reins a chestnut dray. The rest of the horse-folk walked in pairs, chatting as they went, but Bess was alone. Her eyes widened when she saw him. “Macel?”

“Bess, I need to borrow your horse.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” He took hold of the horse’s reins with a hand, to protests from both horse and Bess. “Quickly, Sam’s hurt. I can’t carry him down the hill.”

She shot a glance at the man behind her. This, presumably, was Speke the horsemaster. He was a towering six foot, with big tanned arms; on his face was a resplendent moustache, thick and silver-white as his hair. He grunted and nodded vaguely. Bess turned back to Macel, smiling. “Let’s go, then.”

Nobody in the column seemed especially thrilled at the idea of giving way to let them pass, but nobody seemed to want to pick a fight with a horse either. They got to Sam with nothing but a few scowls. He’d removed his boot by the time they arrived, and the sock beneath it. The ankle was red and horribly swollen. Some water had been poured over it, which trickled off into the dry soil beneath him.

“Right,” said Macel, “let’s get you loaded up.”

“I’m not getting on that,” said Sam. “No chance. I’ll walk.”

“Don’t be stupid, Sam, you can’t walk any distance,” Delie scolded.

“I’m sure my leg’s healed by now.” But it hadn’t, and he didn’t even manage to get into a standing position before once again crumpling. Macel and Delie grabbed an arm each while he was still on the ground, and on Macel’s signal Bess lifted his uninjured foot—pulling a face at her proximity to his soiled boot.

As Bess led the horse away ten minutes later, with Sam on its back, he was still insisting that he’d never get on it.